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Show How Banker Lost Big Trust Cornelius Vanderbllt Showed In His Will That He Didn't Forgive Edward Ed-ward King for Insisting on a Certain Director. "Cornelius Vanderbllt, grandson of the Commodore, who became the head of the Vanderbllt fortune in 1885, following fol-lowing the death of his father, William Wil-liam H., was personally one of the most lovable of men," once Bald to me the late Charles C. Clarke, for many years a vice-president of the par- . F ent system of the Vanderbllt railroads. "He was very shy, and modest almost to a fault. He was absolutely loyal to his friends; was very solicitous of the opinion of every one with whom he was brought in contact, and would never permit himself to indulge in an outburst of temper. Yet notwithstanding notwith-standing these qualities, he was a man of great firmness when once he was convinced that he was right in any matter, though his apparently gentle method of insisting upon recognition recog-nition of his prerogatives often led even persons who knew him fairly well to misjudge his character In .LI. , 141a ntnrw T om going to relate to you is a case In point , "When Mr. Vanderbllt succeeded his father as directing authority of the New York Central system, intimate inti-mate relations had been maintained for years between the Vanderbllt family fam-ily and one of the oldest trust Institutions Insti-tutions of New York. This Intimacy dated back to the days of the Commodore Commo-dore himself, and Cornelius Vanderbllt, Vander-bllt, as the head of the family, encouraged en-couraged and maintained It Imagine Imag-ine his surprise, therefore, when the late Edward King, president of the institution, said to Mr. Vanderbllt one day that he was anxious that a gentleman of high financial standing with whom It was generally known that Mr. Vanderbllt was not on friendly friend-ly terms, should be elected to fill a vacancy In the board of directors of the trust company. No other name could have been more distasteful to Mr. Vanderbllt; 'still, in his characteristically character-istically gentle manner, he ventured to protest against the selection of the man. " 'It is my view,' he said, 'that In the directorate of an important banking bank-ing institution such as ours is there should be as far as possible complete cordiality and harmony among . the various members. Certainly, there should not be elected to the directorate director-ate any one with whom another director di-rector cannot hold personal communication. commu-nication. "Now, you would suppose, wouldn't you," continued Mr. Clarke, "that a plea of that kind would have been sufficient suf-ficient to cause Mr. King to change his mind about wanting the man on the board of directors? But It wasn't; Mr. King was 'sot' on having his own way. The man was elected a director, and because Mr. Vanderbllt made no further complaint of any sort, Mr. King speedily became convinced that Mr. Vanderbilt had become reconciled to his friend's election, to Mt. King's lnwara sausiacuon. "But how gravely mistaken Mr. King was in his estimate of Mr. Van-derbilt's Van-derbilt's character was made plain to us who knew Cornelius Vanderbllt and his ways well when, following the reading of his will after his death In 1899, it was discovered that by a codicil he had transferred a most important im-portant trust, which he had at first established with Mr. King's company, to the strongest rival of that institution." institu-tion." (Copyright, 1910. by E. J. Edwards. AV Rights Reserved.) |